Fight or Flight
by bhut
Summary: Grant Ward hates the idea of slinking away quietly into the night, but he has no other options left - or has he?


**Fight or Flight?**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners._

_Note: the story contains spoilers for the official series._

Grant Ward was not having a perfect day. Technically, all had went without a hitch – Kara Lynn had gotten her repressions and regrets about Sunil Bakshi out of her system, they had returned Bakshi back to their air base and got away with it scot-free, but-

(True, after Kara Lynn's treatment, Bakshi wasn't the same as he was before, but general Talbot himself was rather loopy, and without any Hydra treatments, so Grant and Kara decided that the two of them will get along just as well as they did before.)

But that was not enough. His failure at San Juan gnawed at Grant Ward's nature in the same manner that a beaver gnawed at a tree – slowly but steadily, and eventually the beaver would succeed, and in Grant's case, the beaver was his own true nature. Grant Ward was many things, but firstly he was a fighter and a killer. It may have indicated his warped nature, true, but that is what he was all the same.

Grant Ward had always ploughed his own way through life – head first. It was in this manner that he made it through the military school and the juvenile hall that his parents and elder brother had send him to; it was in this manner that he made it through John Garrett's crazy wilderness survival course; it was in this manner that he made it through both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra training and field actions and assignments – Grant Ward may've been a robot, but that what had made him such an effective agent: he took whatever obstacles came into his path, and overrode them completely, period, until he reached his goal, whatever it was.

Only now it did not work. He was not with S.H.I.E.L.D. (or Hydra) any more, and that left him on his own – his own man and leader – for the first time in his life after a long time. Grant Ward chaffed under authority (unless it was John Garrett), but he tended to need it to have directions in his life all the same, in exchange for his services – and now his services were no longer required, he was left adrift, rejected...and it rankled.

Skye's parting words to him, of course, were something else entirely – _her_ rejection had hurt even more, and not just in the literal sense: that had been dealt with soon enough. But Skye's parting words...that had struck a nerve: somehow Ward, with all of his experience, did not expect to be rejected so blithely after all that they had been through together.

...Ok, yes, a large part of it had been one of them holding the other captive in S.H.I.E.L.D. or Hydra holding facilities, so their relationship needed a lot of work – in the same sense that one could call Wayne Gretzky a decent hockey player for example. But to be rejected with gunfire? Well...

Grant Ward knew that he could get over Skye, especially with Kara Lynn being so warm and helpful and willing at his side. He also knew that he should really plan on killing Skye instead; for she has clearly become a threat to him now – but he could not, or rather would not, do either of these things. Somehow Skye, for all of his words to Kara Lynn to the contrary, meant something very important to him, something that he could not figure out what exactly – and yet he knew that if he were to give her up, he would be a lesser man, a loser.

Grant Ward _hated_ losing, even though he knew how to bide his time before executing his revenge. He had no intention of slinking away into the night with his tail tucked between his legs like some failure of an alley cat. What he wanted to do was-

And here Grant had to admit lay yet _another_ problem: he honestly did not know what he wanted. He wanted Skye, yes, but beyond that? He had no idea, and unlike Cal Johnson Grant did not like the idea of improvising – not fully. He would rather have some sort of a basic plan beforehand before going by the seat of his pants. True, even that would not prevent him from being shot, but it would allow him to have Kevlar under his clothes instead.

"...What are you thinking about?" Kara Lynn spoke up unexpectedly from her position, her eyes still closed beneath the healing mud mask. (Fake nanotech facemask or not, she intended on fixing her real face too, or at least trying to do that.)

"S.H.I.E.L.D.," Grant shrugged.

"Screw them!" the other ex-agent spoke up with a firmness that Grant had not heard before, not even when they were working over Bakshi. "S.H.I.E.L.D. may act all high-and-mighty, that they're all better than Hydra, but they're wrong. Hydra at least takes care to wrap-up their loose ends – S.H.I.E.L.D. just discards them. I was one of their agents, but I wasn't valuable enough – so they forgot all about me, and that bloody fish, Melinda May, she took my face!"

"We've recovered it," Grant said mildly, as he took Kara Lynn by hand, comforting the burned woman.

"Yes, thank you for it," Kara Lynn's voice once more sounded in such a way that she sounded happy, sad and fawning at the same time. "But I still owe agent May one visage! She took my face, I'll take hers!"

"You already have it, with the mask-"

"Oh, that's not what I meant – she took mine with electricity and fire, I'll take hers with a knife," Kara Lynn hissed – and then it was as if she abruptly deflated and sagged – literally. "Of course, if you have other plans I can endure-"

"There's no need," Grant began, when something else happened: he got mail.

Well, e-mail to be more precise, but that was still a rare occurrence: few people actually knew – or cared to know – that he actually had an e-mail and all, and practically none of them worked for Hydra...or S.H.I.E.L.D.

"Is it anyone you know?" Kara curiously asked as she squinted at the e-mail over Grant's shoulder, as the latter thoughtfully read it over.

"Yes," Grant replied, feeling more thoughtful than he ever did lately, but also relieved, as he finally got his idea of what to do, and where to go next. "I do. Faces from my past...and they require our assistance." He turned to his newest partner. "Can our plane get to the Amazon without Hydra detecting it? Or S.H.I.E.L.D. for that matter?"

"It'll be our last flight on that bird," Kara Lynn turned thoughtful immediately. "Getting to the US from San Juan was hard. This will be our plane's a last miracle."

"Good enough," Ward shrugged. "I suspect that we will be staying in the Amazon for a while – load up."

TBC?


End file.
